Cuttack: Inappropriate crowd behavior

Cricket is a gentleman’s game and since its inception almost all of its matches have been played in a very competitive and serene atmosphere. But whenever an event occurs out of the blue, it is a massive blow towards the game in general.

Yesterday in Cuttack, India and South Africa were playing a highly important T20 match as it was do and die situation for India after having lost the First T20 match in the three match series. India were put into bat by the Proteas and that decision did wonders for them as India were bowled out for 92. South Africa went about the chase in a nice and easy fashion and were nearing victory at 70/3 when the crowd starting hurling bottles onto the field to show their disappointment and anguish. The umpires decided to stop play and through the ground staff and law enforcement agencies cleared out the situation but as soon as play resumed the crowd lost it again after just two overs. In the end ,although, this did not have any impact on the result of the match and South Africa won by 7 wickets. But the consequences of this event will be felt for times to come.

Cricket is not known for such events and considering that it is played in very few countries as compared to other sports such as Football, this will not help in the development of the game across more countries.

Indian crowd has done such a thing for the second time as the first one was back in the world cup match at Kolkata in 1996. Back then the crowd set part of the ground on fire as India were on the verge of losing and getting knocked out of the mega event. Play did resume but once again they started throwing bottles onto the field and the match referee had to call the game off and declare the Sri Lankan side victorious by default.

Although having said this, the mischievous and unethical activity from a section of the crowd should not be blamed on the whole crowd because not everyone wanted such a thing to happen there and we’re witnessing a nice game of cricket. The Indian board and their security agencies need to devise a plan to stop these events from happening as they are one of the strongest board in cricket in terms of revenue and cricket activity and such mishaps are going to leave dark spots on their cricketing integrity which will eventually hamper this wonderful game of cricket.

Muneeb Farrukh is a blogger from Karachi currently doing his ACCA after having completed his O & A levels. He is a true sports aficionado and in particular a cricket enthusiast. The writer is also editor at ARY web sports. His twitter handle is @Muneeb313_